Katherine Howe

Conversion Katherine Howe

It's senior year at St. Joan's Academy, and school is a pressure cooker. Through it all, Colleen Rowley and her friends are expected to keep it together. Until they can't. First it's the school's queen bee, Clara Rutherford, who suddenly falls into uncontrollable tics in the middle of class. Her mystery illness quickly spreads to her closest clique of friends, then more students and symptoms follow: seizures, hair loss, violent coughing fits. Soon the media descends on Danvers, Massachusetts, as everyone scrambles to find something, or someone, to blame. Only Colleen - who's been reading The Crucible for extra credit - comes to realize what nobody else has: Danvers was once Salem Village, where another group of girls suffered from a similarly bizarre epidemic three centuries ago...